Kurelek

From his colourful canvases, William Kurelek paints a vivid history of his father, who left the Ukraine after World War I to begin a life of farming in Canada. There are scenes of village life in the Ukraine, then the early days of struggle on an Alberta homestead, and the growing comfort, confidence and family. The narrator tells the story as Kurelek remembers it and his paintings record it - harvest time, weddings, the move to Manitoba and scenes from prairie life in the '20s and '30s. The story concludes with the move down east where his father had planned to retire, but finding idleness irksome, he bought a small farm. Here in Ontario, Kurelek paints another landscape with the same pleasure he painted the old.